No, it's less cognitive than that. Basically from a very young age relationships that should have been safe (parents, siblings "trusted" adults) were very abusive so I learned that safe relationships were ones where I could expect to be abused and exploited, which has made it very difficult to trust other people, know what my needs are and to ask for help, to let others care for me and to know safe from unsafe. Simply put I didn't know when I was being mistreated because that felt normal and I felt like I deserved it.
By offering a truly safe, accepting, valuing relationship my therapist is slowly challenging those core beliefs and is giving me a different model for what safe relationships look like. So at times I find myself using that relationship as a comparator (eg that behaviour isn't ok because my T would never treat me like that). I've started to build new relationships that do look healthy, and where I can challenge safely. So effectively changing what safe looks like in my relationships. It's no so much a process of knowing why I look for damaging relationships as much as being able to know what being safe feels like and recreating that in other relationships.
She is accepting of all of me, which helps me start to accept all of the bits of me, so I become less self blaming and more gentle with myself. Don't know if any of that makes sense?
